


Change The Colors Of The Sky (The Way You Loved Me)

by Verasteine



Category: Alles was zählt
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-03
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verasteine/pseuds/Verasteine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once you've left, you can never go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change The Colors Of The Sky (The Way You Loved Me)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://lefaym.livejournal.com/profile)[**lefaym**](http://lefaym.livejournal.com/) for the speedy beta and the hand holding. You're the best, hon! This completes my second [](http://queer-fest.livejournal.com/profile)[**queer_fest**](http://queer-fest.livejournal.com/) fic of this year, in deference to the fact that I defaulted last year. Enjoy.

He turns a corner in Munich; it really is that simple.

A visit to his old home town, the city in autumn as grey and rainy as he remembers it being, just before the frost sets in and the snow starts blanketing the streets. It's strange to be back, after so many years, strange to see places that have changed, and yet he knows that it's him as much as the city that's changed.

He turns a corner and nearly runs into someone; at the last minute, he changes course and avoids a collision.

"Deniz?"

The surprised voice saying his name makes him look up, and there's Guido, a few years older, his hair shorter than it used to be, but same the scar crossing his eyebrow, the one he got on the ice when they were both fifteen. "What the-- Hey, man."

They embrace as if it's yesterday they'd last seen each other, not five years ago. "Hey." Guido squints at him, an expression that hits Deniz like a punch to the gut, because it transports him back to his high school days and the simple camaraderie of the hockey team, a time in his life when nothing was complex. "What have you been up to? I heard you moved away."

"Yeah, to my dad's." Deniz makes an absent gesture, because there is too much that he can't explain and so many things going on his life. "You have time to get a drink? I'm buying."

"Sure."

They fall into step together, and it's Guido who picks out the café, because Deniz has been away long enough that he has no clue any more. They order beers and sit in a corner to catch up, and Guido pulls out his wallet and shows a picture of his wife and young son.

"Met her the last time I was on leave from military service, and man, I knew right there. I mean, I was stupid and I fucked it up a few times, but we got on the same page in the end."

Deniz knows exactly what he means and nods. "Looks good, man."

"Yeah. So what about you? Girlfriend? Kids?"

They lie on the tip of his tongue, for a moment, the words. But in the end, he swallows. "No. Single."

Guido shrugs, easily, like there's nothing to it, and Deniz wonders if he even remembers why Deniz left, what happened in those crazy months leading up to the summer vacation before their senior year.

"So what do you do now?" Deniz asks, and feels like a coward for changing the subject. A part of him is grateful, not having to explain, and the voice in his head berating him for chickening out sounds disturbingly familiar.

\--

He rings the bell and looks up, the high rise classier than he was expecting, but then again, he never really paid attention to Harald except to call him names and slam doors in his face, and he supposes he really should have known that his mother married well.

"Yes?" a familiar voice says through the intercom.

He realises he doesn't know what to say at all, realises he has no idea beyond looking her up, and finally just says, "It's Deniz."

There's silence, deafening silence that wraps around the crackling sound of the intercom, and then the door buzzes. Deniz pushes it open without thinking, then pauses on the threshold as if he could change his mind, looks at the intercom panel and almost wants to say something.

The moment passes and he pushes the door open, walking into a well designed hallway with a plush welcome mat and granite floors. The lift carrying him up is appropriately silent in its operation and the dinging sound of the bell as the doors slide open on the eleventh floor just the right sort of charm.

He hates the place already.

He walks down the gallery to the right number, and his mother is standing in the doorway, her blonde hair blowing around her face in the wind. She looks just like she looked the last time they saw each other; her mouth pinched in annoyance, her eyes narrowed a little in distrust. It brings out the teenager in him that he hasn't been, has learned not to be, for a few years now, and he wants to say something flip, but he swallows the words.

"Hi, mom."

"Deniz." For a moment, she stands in the doorway looking at him, and he wonders if she's expecting him to kiss or hug her, then the ridiculous moment passes and she steps aside to let him in. "What are you doing here?"

"I was in town," he says, which is only half the truth, and then adds, "I thought I'd look you up."

She frowns as she closes the door, the wind making an eerie sound as the lock clicks shut. "We haven't seen each other since you were seventeen."

"I know." He feels stupid as soon as he's saying it, feels out of place in the clean, cream coloured hallway with its elegant coat stand and art on the walls. He unzips his coat out of habit and puts it up on the coat stand, next to a long, fine wool coat he knows belongs to her, and a shorter, expensive leather jacket that he realises must belong to Thomas. Nervously, he wipes his palms on his jeans and turns back to her. "I mean..."

"Yeah." She stands there looking at him, and the expression is only a step away from the way she used to confront him when he came home late or had been cutting school. All that's missing are the hands on her hips. "Do you want some coffee?"

It's so normal he has to clear his throat. "Yeah, okay."

She turns and opens a door and he follows to find himself in a kitchen. It's gleaming, spotless, and he remembers that she doesn't really cook, and this kitchen is bearing out that she still doesn't. She busies herself with an expensive looking coffee maker, and Deniz feels even more out of place.

As the coffee machine gurgles and she sets out cups, sugar, and cream on a tray, she looks up and says, "Why are you really here? Is it your father?"

He shakes his head automatically. "Dad's fine."

"Then what?"

The distrust was always strong between them; on his part because he blamed her for his father leaving, on her part because he couldn't stop lying trying to make everything better. He has a disturbingly good insight, suddenly, into what created the path that led him back here, into what created the whole situation to begin with. "I came to see you," he says at last, and she doesn't respond, taking the coffee pot from the machine and putting it on the tray.

He follows her as she carries the tray to a spacious sitting room decked out in the same cream and with chocolate brown furniture, and has a momentary flash of, _Roman would love this_ , and that thought hurts. He sits unbidden on the sofa and looks through the almost panoramic window to the Munich skyline.

Growing up, they'd lived on the third floor of a high rise that looked out at other high rises and concrete and steel. Very different from the sight of parks and the river that he can see now.

She pours coffee on automatism, like the good hostess that she trained herself to be, and then looks up. "How... how do you take it?"

There's something like embarrassment colouring her voice, and he realises they are strangers to each other, like the city is a stranger to him, after so many years away. Guido was less of a stranger to him than his own mother is, and he realises that for all his neglecting to tell the truth, he shared more with Guido during his teenage years than with his own mother.

"Just cream," he says, and is surprised there's no anger in his voice.

She adds some and hands him the cup, and he takes it, stirring the spoon to give himself something to do. He takes a sip and it's good, strong coffee, the way his father makes it, too. "Thanks," he manages.

She nods, her mouth quirking in a corner, nothing more. She drinks her own coffee, carefully, blowing on the liquid to keep from scalding herself, and careful not to smudge her lipstick. "How have you been?"

 _I lost everything_ , he wants to say, and then knows that he can't, not because the words are too big or it hurts too much, but because they don't have that kind of relationship. "I'm okay," he says instead, because it makes it easier, it makes it better.

"Good."

"You?"

She gestures at the flat, as if that's an answer, and he realises abruptly that for her it is.

"I'm glad." He finds that he means it. "Thomas okay?"

"He's fine. Doing well in school."

Under her collected tone, there's the sting of, _better than you ever did_ , and he knows he achieved things, too, things she wasn't around to see. Rock bottom doesn't afford him much moral superiority, but he hasn't been a completely failure in life. "Okay."

"Deniz..." she says, hesitantly.

He looks up from his coffee cup.

"Are you happy?"

He shrugs. He's miserable, but to tell her that... "I guess."

She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear and looks at him, the way she used to look at him before everything went sour between them, before he started to become aware of the gaping chasm between himself and the world, before she started to see that they were strangers to each other. "You don't look happy," she says.

"I broke up with--" He breaks off, because he's suddenly aware that she doesn't know. She's never known. For all that he's been through, even that he's put her through, he never ended up telling her, admitting, why.

He doesn't want to do any of this alone, not Guido, not his mother, none of it without the love of his life, and he lost Roman.

"Your relationship ended?" she asks, taking a sip of her coffee and sounding dangerously like it matters to her. "Tell me about her, Deniz."

It's an invitation, a moment of warmth they haven't shared in years, and he looks at her because he's never, not even when she sent him away, felt more like a stranger to her. Her eyes are soft and even kind, and he wonders if that's going to change now, if he tells her the truth, or if he lies.

"Him," he says. "Him."

She freezes in place, the coffee cup halfway to her mouth. The red varnish on her finger nails stands out in contrast because she's squeezing the ceramic so hard her skin's turning white. She blinks, once, twice, and then continues as if she never paused, taking a sip of her coffee.

When she puts the cup down on the glass table, it rattles against the table top because her hand is shaking.

"His name," Deniz says, suddenly just feeling sad and alone, anger drained as if it was never there, "is Roman."

She clears her throat. "And you loved-- you loved him."

She stumbles over the pronoun. He tries to feel angry at her for that, but he can't, because it's been too long. "He's the love of my life," Deniz just says, because there's no point in denying the truth now.

"I'm sorry," she says, and then after a pause, adds, "When did you... when did you know?"

He puts together what she means because he was waiting for the question. "The last year I was here... I didn't know, but I suspected."

She shakes her head, as if things fall into place, or have fallen out of it. "You never told me."

"What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, mom, I think I'm queer'?" Now the bitterness is seeping into his voice.

In response, her tone is testy. "Is that what you said to your father?"

"No." He thinks. "Yes, really."

"And what did he do, threaten to beat you up?"

Deniz shrugs. The real events don't matter so much now. "Whatever," he says.

"So. You're gay."

"Yes. I guess." It seems odd to be putting a name to his sexuality; he hasn't really, in the past, and he's been okay with _gay_ because it fit, and now he's not sure about anything. It doesn't really matter when he's not seeing anyone.

"What happened at school, was it because..."

He shrugs at that, too, because it seems so long ago and so insignificant.

"Did you think you couldn't tell me?"

That pisses him off, like it's about her. " _I_ didn't know, okay? I was trying to fucking figure out how not to be queer, because man, that didn't fit in my life! I was the Turkish kid, the kid who played hockey, not the kid who wanted to fuck other boys!"

"Sit down," she says, with the same irritated authority that she used to use and that he's allergic to, and he realises he's standing.

She looks at him for a while, and finally he does sit down, not because she told him but because there's no point in standing when his flash of anger is exhausted.

"Will you..." She clears her throat and takes another sip of coffee. "Will you tell me about him?"

She's still stumbling a little over the word. He tries to reach inside himself and find words to describe Roman, and fails, because everything fucking hurts about this and he's not yet really past the stage of _never be okay again_. He reaches into his back pocket instead, pulls out his wallet and flips it open, the photographs that he didn't tear up, this time around. He hands them over silently, not looking at the frozen moments as she takes them from his hand.

He knows what she's seeing; the shot taken last summer by the lake, him leaning against Roman's chest, looking up at him, the silent promise in both their eyes. They had made good on that later and Flo hadn't looked them in the eye for a day. As she flips to the next picture, he knows that one, too; taken shortly before Mike died, him, Mike, Roman, and Lars at the bar, toasting to future success they would never have. And then the last one, Roman in Deniz's arms, comfortably leaning against him, nothing able to come between them, last new year's eve.

She hands them over and he tucks them back, still unseen, everything indelibly inked on the inside of his eyelids.

"He's..." She looks at her hands, clearly searching for words. "He looks nice."

 _Not what I was expecting_ hangs in the air between them, and Deniz is caught between anger and indifference, between wanting to tell her and wanting to keep his mouth shut and let it all go, set himself adrift again in a world that she is merely a speck of dust in, someone he once knew.

He stands without thinking about it, and she looks up, then nods. She leads him to the door, and he kisses her cheek this time, and says, "Thank you for the coffee."

She smiles, only halfway, and her eyes meet his and he knows what she sees now, knows that she sees his father and a stranger and the queer kid that she was never meant to have. "Bye, Deniz."

"Bye."

He turns and walks back down the gallery, zipping his coat up against the wind, jamming his hands into his pockets.

He knows, as he pushes open the door that leads to the lifts and the stairwell, that he will never be here again.

The lift dings, melodically, and the doors slide open, and he steps inside. There's an old lady leaning against the back wall, a small, white, furry dog sitting by her feet. She smiles and says, "Good afternoon."

He backs out again, nearly colliding with the closing doors. "I'll take the stairs," he says, and the doors slide shut on her surprised face.

On the way down, he listens to the sound of his sneakers on the concrete steps. Eleven floors, and nowhere to call home.

\--  
 _finis_.


End file.
